Are the moonbat liberals out to fuck up the Constitution?

A couple of weeks ago Bill Maher mentioned a new Constitutional Convention. I thought it was just a lone nutty idea. It isn't.

There is actually some debate on calling for a new Constitutional Convention. Worse, making it subject to repeated amendment.

http://www.hlpronline.com/2006/11/levinson_01.html (The Harvard Law & Policy Review (HLPR) is published twice annually and serves as the official journal of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.)

So is this the official legal trend from the left in reaction to The Federalist Society?

It's not the top that is broken. It's the bottom falling for propaganda by the wingnut/neocons over the last 30 years.

A far better solution, though it would take a while, would be to teach enough law in high school so they can read a Supreme Court opinion before being old enough to vote. Same with logic and propaganda analysis. We know here at DU, if the people have the facts, they get it. But we also know plenty of Democrats didn't get it until this last election.

Law, logic and propaganda education can give them the tools they need.

The public is too easily swayed by the current mood, and it is too easy for the corporate media to create that mood. We know this for a fact because of the recent state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. We know how easy it is for big business to propagandize a "No" vote on most anything they want. Another is victim's rights amendments that aren't really victim's rights amendments but are attacks on the Bill of Rights. There are many other examples.

That's because they were bamboozled. Even if we should change the Constitution, the people need some ability to avoid getting bamboozled in the process, because if it does start happening, the media machine will twist it to what THEY want. The Framers knew this and so intentionally made it difficult to make amendments when moods and panics swept across the country.

There may be some good points Levinson article, but breaking up the media and a few other things should come first.

all members of congress to pledge again to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States. And to ask the president, vice president and cabinet to do the same...GOOD IDEA.

I think the Constitution, as it stands, is a remarkably apt document. There are too many people who've never been taught to understand it as it is. I certainly don't think we need a new one.

We could, on the other hand, stand to implement FDR's second Bill of Rights.

If we want to change it - or to clarify it - there are perfectly reasonable ways to do it, which we seem to never do any more. it was designed to be a living document, and to be amended - in fact it was amended 10 times immediately after being ratified. The Founders were telling us something by that.

come from people who say that the framers were elitists, and slave-owners, and property owners that considered women to be second-class citizens, little better than the chattel they considered the slaves to be.

But one should also note that they included no language in the document that discluded the addition of either women or blacks as citizens...and I'd say they had the foresight to see a time when it might become an issue.

being counted as 3/5 of a person in the original Constitutional for apportionment purposes.

But that provision was abolished a long time ago.

an easy thing to do.

There's 27 of 'em. If we don't count the first 10, that's about one every 10-15 years - fewer recently. I think that stagnation of amendments and states are a bad sign.

A provision of the New York Constitution in effect requires the New York electorate every 20 years to answer yea or nay to the question, "Shall there be a convention to revise the constitution and amend the same?"

Can you imagine if this was done every 20 years?

Honestly. In the last six years, we've seen just how far one party has taken a shit on our country and used the constitution as toilet paper (yeah, it's not a pretty metaphor but I couldnt come up with anything else). Having something like a Constitutional Convention, say, every 5 or six years, could bring some balance to our democracy and maybe even save our country.

When BushCo and the Rethugs were gods?

That's why the Framers made it so difficult.

I'm sorry, but that is rather offensive.

"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment… laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind… as that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, institutions must advance also, to keep pace with the times… We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain forever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
-- Thomas Jefferson, on reform of the Virginia Constitution

"That our Creator made the earth for the use of the living and not of the dead; that those who exist not can have no use nor right in it, no authority or power over it; that one generation of men cannot foreclose or burden its use to another, which comes to it in its own right and by the same divine beneficence; that a preceding generation cannot bind a succeeding one by its laws or contracts; these deriving their obligation from the will of the existing majority, and that majority being removed by death, another comes in its place with a will equally free to make its own laws and contracts; these are axioms so self-evident that no explanation can make them plainer."
-- Thomas Jefferson to T. Earle, 1823
-------------snip-----------------
<http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Quotes-USconstitution.htm>

Gee, Thomas Jefferson is a moonbat liberal!

Who voted on ratifying the Bill of Rights? The state legislatures? All the people of each state? What was the debate in this state or that?

I have no idea! And how can someone so ignorant of what the Constitution is vote on if we should overhaul it?

Don't get me wrong. The slavery debate really tainted the Constitutional Convention, and the Constitution, but they left it open enough to start working through that. Without those compromises, it would have failed.

Truth is, I don't trust the people today who depend the on modern media to know how best to make changes. Maybe if each state elected representatives to a new convention based on population, that might be trusted better, but less populated states wouldn't go for that. Can you imagine the passing Senate doing this? Or even the incoming Senate.

How can anyone who just saw all the BushCo propaganda and all the damage it did think we could trust a new convention to be rational? What's more, and more important, the original Framers were reacting to a tyranny and didn't trust government. What would happen now?

No, as long as the Right is in control of he media, it could never workout better than what we have.

You have an overenthusiastic appraisal of the "framers" and the Constitution. I don't and neither did they as my Jefferson quotes prove. I think far too much power was given to capital and not enough to labor. Jefferson and Madison were concerned about corporate power back then. Lincoln even more so. In 2007, You can't tell me our system is working better and that we are freer than many similar nations like irony of ironies, Germany, Spain or even the UK?

By Insanity and Coulter and all if it gains traction. It is kind of nuts when you think about it and it sure isn't as radical as what the neocons tried to do (they do it through the courts, quietly).

Anyway, it was just a sound bite prediction.

Nice subject line.

Flamebait?

It's inflammitory BS obviously used to piss me and others off around here.

You going to reply with another ? ?? or ????

Go away.

You go away.

EDIT: If you don't want to address the substance of the post, it's easy enough to ignore.

:)

America is far too unstable to survive a constitutional convention without going into civil war.

And the media is too lopsided.

It periodically comes up as an issue, inspired by individuals all across the political spectrum, all with different agendas in mind, but with one thing in common. They didn't like something that happened, usually as a result of a Supreme Court decision or series of decisions, and they move to the most radical solution possible. Scrap the government and start over.

As merely one example, look into Mike Leavitt's "Conference of the States" in the mid-90's that many recognized was simply a Constitutional Convention by another name. Ben Nelson cooperated with him on this, btw.

I remember it from the 80's, but not the details.

July 28, 1995
Why We Need A "Conference of The States"
by Edwin Meese III

When Congress failed to pass a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget -- something an overwhelming majority of Americans say they want -- it showed the power of Washington to derail ideas it doesn't like.

That's why 50 state governors are calling for a "Conference of the States": To hold Washington accountable to the people. But they are meeting stiff opposition from groups on both sides of the political spectrum. These groups have succeeded in convincing 14 state legislatures to reject or defer plans to attend the first such conference, forcing planners to postpone it until next year.

Those on the left fear the Conference of the States because it might influence Congress to restrict federal power. They are correct; it could, and probably should.

Others, mostly on the right, are concerned that the Conference of the States could become "a constitutional convention in disguise." These people -- most of whom favor balanced budgets and fiscal restraint -- fear that big-government liberals could take political control of such a gathering, call a constitutional convention, and alter America's founding document along lines that would further entrench Washington's power. It's important to set the record straight on what a Conference of the States is all about.

http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ED072895.cfm

I'm afraid of a backlash like that if the Dems get too wild.

AMENDMENT XXVII

Originally proposed Sept. 25, 1789. Ratified May 7, 1992.

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened.

Not exactly earth-shaking, was it?

http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/constitution_amendments_11-27.html

:eyes:

He is basically asking if we want more democracy than we have now. Which asks a fundamental question. Are we believers in democracy, i.e. the rule of the people, or are we afraid of the people?

Are the American people so easily led, so ignorant, so manipulatable, because they are seldom challenged to think for themselves? To have a real say in their own future?

The idea that the constitution that rules our lives should be put to the test on a regular basis, say every 20 years, is a revolutionary idea worthy of consideration.

It would certainly make the idea of "We the People" more a reality than it is now.